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Finally I got my hands on a copy of this game, Dissidia: Final Fantasy is the newest Final Fantasy game released for the Sony PlayStation Portable or PSP. I have the Japanese version and the North American version will arrive sometime mid year in 2009. Honestly I thought this game wouldn’t suit me but I was wrong, very wrong!

Story and game play
After a quite long but very enjoyable opening cinematic of the good and evil, you will pretty much get the idea of what’s going on. Cosmo, the goddess of harmony (the good) and Chaos, the god of discord (the evil) have both summoned a few of the past Final Fantasy characters to fight for his/her side. Honestly I didn’t know any of those characters prior to Final Fantasy 6 until I played this game. I was in grade 6 when Final Fantasy 6 (3 in America) came out, so can’t blame me.

  

The heroes:

-Warrior of Light – Final Fantasy
- Firion – Final Fantasy II
- Onion Knight – Final Fantasy III
- Cecil Harvey – Final Fantasy IV
- Bartz Klauser – Final Fantasy V
- Terra Branford – Final Fantasy VI
- Cloud Strife Final – Fantasy VII
- Squall Leonhart – Final Fantasy VIII
- Zidane Tribal – Final Fantasy IX
- Tidus – Final Fantasy X
- Shantotto – Final Fantasy XI (Ahh our beloved and adorable tarutaru!)

  

The Villains:

- Garland – Final Fantasy
- Emperor – Final Fantasy II
- Cloud of Darkness – Final Fantasy III
- Golbez – Final Fantasy IV
- Exdeath – Final Fantasy V
- Kefka Palazzo – Final Fantasy VI
- Sephiroth – Final Fantasy VII
- Ultimecia – Final Fantasy VIII
- Kuja – Final Fantasy IX
- Jecht – Final Fantasy X
- Gabranth – Final Fantasy XII

Initially you have to go through the Prologue which acts like a series of tutorials for the game. I really like this game because it is a combination of board game, action and RPG all in one! The Prologue will teach you how to navigate through the board, obtain items from treasure chests, fight monsters etc. At first you might feel overwhelmed, at least I did, with all the features and options. But since the menus are so elegantly designed it was easy to get used to and which button is for what option. Unlike the Macross Ace Frontier that I reviewed about two weeks ago. This is what I expect from Square Enix from all its games and so far I have not been disappointed.

  

There are two main modes – the story mode and 1 on 1. The story mode will let you pick which character you want to play the story with. The 1 on 1 to me is just a way to level grind your characters.

As you fight through battles and completing stages, you will gain experience points as well as items and gils (money) which can be used to booster your character’s stats and purchase new weapons/items from the shop.

There are quite a lot of things to cover in terms of the actual game play because its separated between the board game part as well as the actual battles. I will try and cover as much as I can.

The board game part pretty much determines how many battles you will be fighting, on the board there will be treasure chests, healing item, monsters (for you to fight and gain experience and items) as well as a statue that you have to destroy in order to finish a particular stage (note you don’t necessary have to kill all enemies to finish the stage, destroying the statue is enough, at least this is what I’ve seen so far. During each stage, you will be given points called Destiny Points, its basically just points for you to navigate throughout the stage, if you manage to complete the stage without going to the negative, you earn more points after completing the stage, sometimes I find that you have to get to the negative in order to get to everything (or maybe I just suck). You can refill your DP by completing the DP Chance like defeating your enemy within 10 seconds or trigger your EX attack (the special move which I will talk about later) within 10 seconds (not all enemies have DP Chance so you have to plan the way you move throughout the board.

  

On the board, you don’t just move around though, you also have skills that you can use such as healing 30% of your HP or cast negative effects onto your enemy that is adjacent to where you are. Finally you can also press R to go into search mode and check on each enemy’s level as well as the the DP Chance ahead of time. I don’t find it that useful though.

That should cover the basics of the board game part now onto the actual battle!

Battles are very fast paced, the square and circle buttons are for attack, R is defend, L is toggling targeting on/off (sometimes you want to go somewhere else and not looking at your enemy all the time), triangle allows you to walk on walls or jump from one place to another (pretty handy when you fight in a stage where there is hardly anywhere for you to walk on, you will have to jump around) and cross is jump. EX attack or special move is triggered when the EX gauge is full and by pressing R+square. If you have esper equipped, you can call it out by pressing R+circle, again when the EX gauge is full. You will slowly fill up your EX gauge when you attack, being attacked or by obtaining the EX fill up item that appears randomly during battle.

Once EX attack is triggered, a sequence of buttons will be displayed to you, you will have to get them correctly to get the maximum number of hits out of it and in the end, you will hit the button that will be displayed to you for the final blow as well. I haven’t mastered this attack yet though.

  

Upon leveling up, your character will not only gain stats, but he/she will also gain more skills that you can map to your keys. Pressing left and circle can have a different attack than pressing right/top/down and circle! So the combination is endless, well not literally but you get my idea. That goes for the square button attack as well. You can also pick a different EX attack from the EX Mode menu. This should give you at least some ideas of what this game has to offer. I’m PRETTY sure there are more features that I have not covered, like this mini game like option that requires PP that I’m still trying to figure out what its for, all I know is that I used up 30PP to do something related to “treasure hunting in a cave”. Sorry I can’t read too much Japanese.

There is also a multiplayer mode but I haven’t had the opportunity to test it out.

  

Graphics and audio
The graphics are pretty impressive, and I’m not just talking about the CG intro but game play graphics as well. Character facial animations are one of the best I’ve seen on a PSP, you can really see detailed facial animations from each character. The way their eyes blink to how their mouths/lips move as they talk is so smooth its like watching an anime. This is pretty much the best feature I like about Dissidia: Final Fantasy in terms of graphics.

Also worth a mention is the special/lighting effects of the game, be it whether you are moving on the board, scrolling through menus or battling enemies as well as the destructable objects and when you or your enemy gets pushed into a wall, the wall will break too. All these really enhance the game making it more realistic.

Square Enix has been known for having some of the best music composed in the gaming industry if not the best. And Dissidia: Final Fantasy is no exception but then again the game basically uses music from all the Final Fantasy series.

Final verdict
If you are a Final Fantasy fan, I don’t see why you would want to miss this, of course unless you don’t have a PSP then I can’t blame you. But if you are a fan and own a PSP, I suggest you pick up the Japanese version if you can’t wait for the North American version on ebay or yesasia. The fact that this game has features from board games, action/fighting games and traditional RPG games should be more than enough to satisfy a wide range of gamers that are into different game genres. Finally, this game has so much features to offer that I think its worth more than what I’ve paid for, you don’t see a lot of games like that too often!

9.0/10

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Today I had a chance to spend some time on Garnet Chronicle, an anime style RPG game but unfortunately its the Japanese version and as far as I know there is no release date for the English version.

Story and controls

  

Since its in Japanese, I vaguely know what is going on, so far! Your hero character is a knight student from a Knight academy. Your first quest is to bring a recommendation letter from the principle of the academy to the commander somewhere near the village. All of a sudden the entire battalion is being attacked by an evil looking character and his werewolf like companion, to no surprise, the entire battalion is wiped out and of course our main hero survives but barely and saves by a sexy female elf thief/treasure hunter. From then on, she joins you in the quest for the “Stone of the Evil Mind” (sorry that’s a direct translation from Japanese to English). Then once inside the “Tower of Lost” you meet up with another character, this time he’s a wizard class and he joins you afterwords. That’s how far I am in the game.

  

The controls are typical walk with your analog stick, R will bring up the map but so far there is no map when venturing inside dungeons, circle is confirm while cross is cancel, typical Japanese style, the American version might have these two buttons reversed. Unfortunately there’s no run button so walking around might feel slow at times. You can also save the game anytime and thankfully the menus are in English as well as the Japanese explanation, only the menus though.

Game play and graphics
Game play is pretty much the same old turn based RPG similar to Final Fantasy (up to Final Fantasy X-2 since the battle system has changed starting FF11). You and your enemies will take turns to attack/defend/cast magic on each other. Which is fine except it feels really slow and rather boring, it would make a huge difference if the attack was smoother and faster such that attacks are executed as soon as the one before finished its move. But as you gather more people on your team, the fight gets more interesting and faster so its not too bad after all. Level grinding is also part of the game but not necessary. It is surprisingly fast to level up though, at least for the first 20 or so levels which can really speed up the grinding. As you finish each battle you are rewarded with money, experience, random items and skill points. Skill points can be spent on each character’s skill tree to unlock more powerful attack and support skills. Skill points are shared among all your characters unfortunately! And last but not least money you earned from each battle obviously will be for buying weapons, armors and support items. There are also cards and stones that can enhance your weapons such as turning your sword to have ice element and upgrade your special abilities. Treasure chests are scattered all over the map, inside buildings, out in the woods or anywhere in the villages. Some are less obvious as I have found one hidden one so far.

  

One interesting feature that I have never seen before, at least in an RPG, is the “sneak” feature. When you approach your enemies from behind without being spotted, you can deal damage to them before the battle starts. Same applies to the enemies, if they spotted you, they would run to you and if your back is facing them then you will get attacked first. You will know when your enemies have spotted you when an exclamation mark appears on top of their heads. This feature is independent of who attacks first when the battle begins, so that means there’s a chance you can attack twice before an enemies can attack you, same applies to the enemies. If you can utilize this feature you can really gain an upper hand when fighting and makes battles a lot easier.

Graphics are nothing fancy but well drawn anime style. Everything is 2D based but don’t let that get you because even though the characters are simple 2D sprites, their expressions and body gestures can be seen clearly depend on the situations. There are also nice flashy special effects when your characters use their speical abilities.
One thing I don’t like is the fact that, all enemies look the same on the map, so you don’t know what kind of enemies you will face until the battle screen comes up. I don’t see why the developers cannot make the enemies show up on the map as well. But then again, what if there are more than one type of enemies, which one would they show? Maybe that’s the reason why.

  

Sound

Your typical anime music, your characters and enemies will say something before they attack which makes battle less dull. Sometimes your characters will even voice over during conversations. I can imagine the English translation will be bad and takes away the Japanese “atmosphere” just like any other games that went through the Jap to English translation. In general the music is great most of the time, but sometimes they can get a bit too repetitive and get annoying afterwords.

Final Verdict
Overall I think this game is worth a try, this type of game is nothing new but the game is still enjoyable. I had problems turning off my PSP until it went out of batteries while playing it. That should give you an idea of how addictive and enjoyable this game is, specially for level grinders like myself. Hopefully the American version will be released soon so you English speaking people can enjoy this game as much as I am now. And for those that can read Chinese, Japanese or don’t care about the story, you should be able to get a copy from ebay or YESASIA.

8/10

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Sony and Spanish based WiFi provider FON have joined forces to provide free WiFi access for PSP owners in Japan. Imagine surfing the net, watching streaming music and movies on the go! But in Japan only, which is somewhat expected since Japan has a history of keeping the goodies to themselves. For those lucky enough to be in Japan and own a PSP, they will also be able to download custom Dissidia: Final Fantasy themes which the game itself will be released in December. I wouldn’t have heard of a new Final Fantasy release if it wasn’t for this WiFi deal.

It would be great if this offer became available to us in North America, but chances are pretty slim in my opinion, at least it won’t be free. One reason is that Japan is much smaller than say, Canada, so setting up those hot spots is much easier and less costly. They are already setup in Japan which made the setup even easier. Its just a matter of integrating with each other’s system.

Although we will most likely not get this free WiFi access anytime soon. It is still good news to those living in Japan, again the Japanese always gets the goodies. Think I have one more reason to go to Japan since I have a Japanese version PSP.